The Spice Garden

Looking all the world like Elvira Gulch from The Wizard of Oz, Miss Clara arrived at our backdoor and hitched her old painted pony to the woodbox. Alice! she shrieked, Alice! The spice garden came!

My grandmother sighed and put aside the neat pile of ironing she'd been about to start. Clara threw open the door and was immediately mobbed by the dogs - she always carried some sort of treat in her apron pocket and never asked anything in return - the dogs adored her. She was, as always, all in black, down to her petticoats and high heeled lace up, pointed shoes. She rustled when she walked, a whispery sort of sound that could be eerie if you were to meet her on a foggy, damp night, collecting weeds and water plants along the side of the road and muttering to herself, but Nana said she was harmless, that she lived in her own peculiar and isolated reality, a widow for most of her life, and deserving of kindness. So in she came, carrying a long, rectangular box wrapped in brown paper and tied with black shoestrings .Not likely to be roses, Nana told me under her breath, Better put the kettle on.

Clara had been married at fifteen, widowed at seventeen, and alone for the next fifty years. She'd had her second chances - she'd been a striking young girl before she turned odd - but none had lived up to her teenage husband and she remained a widow. In her twenties, she began gardening and experimenting with soil and self invented growing techniques, she built a greenhouse and became obsessed with herbs and wild ferns. She made teas, poultices, seasonings, powders and potions and it was a short step to spell casting and witchhood. When she was in her thirties, she burned all her clothes in a tremendous bonfire on the beach - but for the tide coming in, Nana said, we'd all have been turned to ashes - and after that she dressed all in black and went, as Nana remarked serenely, mad as a hatter. She kept to herself except for prowling the woods and roads at night, splashing in the ditches and gathering water lillies and moss by the light of an old kerosene lantern. It was said she could cure warts and baldness, make crops grow, turn a man mute with a wave of her hand, even bring love into a lonely life. What idiotic, emptyheaded nonsense! Nana snapped, What absolute tripe! She's a plain and simple, ordinary madwoman, not a witch! Still, Clara was sought out and prevailed upon to cast spells and brew her teas, bring rain or prosperity, heal a lifetime of lameness or foretell the future. She did this with resignation and a flair for the dramatic, and the magic sustained her and kept her company.

She had seen the spice garden advertised in the Spiegel catalogue and immediately trudged the five or so miles to The Point to enlist my grandmother to order it for her in exchange for a frantic chicken and the promise of fresh eggs. There were seeds and soil and wooden containers, tubing and heat coils and an instruction manual for beginners - all neatly packaged and labeled - lemon grass, edible ginger, curry leaf, peppercorns - soon a maze of herbs and spices was spread out over the dining room table alongside Nana's coffee and toasted English muffins. Clara handled the brightly colored seed packets lovingly, drawn by their exotic and strange sounding names, by the promise of saffron and chili, the suggestion of green teas and soothing mint leaves. My grandmother summoned John Sullivan and his tool kit and the afternoon passed as the spice garden took form. Toward evening, the entire project was packed into the old Lincoln and driven ever so cautiously to Clara's greenhouse where Nana gave Long John a new ten dollar bill to stay and arrange it all to Clara's specifications. John turned the money down, saying that time spent with Miss Clara and all this foreign-ness was payment enough.

The following summer, and for many summers afterward, my grandmother's kitchen reeked with clove and cinnamon and ginger - Miss Clara's spice garden thrived and she shared her spices generously and often, arriving on the painted pony with a black cloth bag slung over one shoulder and carrying with her the scent of faraway places and a hint of magic. Just a hint, Nana would say with a smile, just enough to balance the madness.